Women contribute important insights in agricultural research. Whether as government researchers, university professors, or senior research managers, their skills and perspectives are essential for addressing the unique and pressing challenges of all farmers, particularly female farmers. In addition, recruiting from only male candidate pools hampers efforts by African agricultural research agencies to hire the best candidates, regardless of sex.

These are a few of many good reasons why African countries should ensure that women are well represented among their agricultural researchers.

The number of women researchers rose in both absolute and relative terms between 2008 and 2014—and in 2014, an average of 24 percent of full time equivalent researchers in a sample of 40 African countries were female.

Obviously there is much more progress to be made. An in-depth look at the data reveals that representation varies widely between countries, and women tend to be in less senior positions.

What obstacles are women agricultural researchers facing? What can help overcome them? ASTI’s gender-specific data provides an illustration, but much more information is needed to answer these questions. Success for African farmers—both male and female—depends on it.

ASTI officially launched its new agricultural research and development indicators for Latin America and the Caribbean at a roundtable event at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) on Wednesday April 27.

Pedro Martel, division chief of the IDB’s Environment, Rural Development Disaster Risk Management division offered welcoming remarks and Cesar Falconi, principal economist in the same division and a key supporter of the project, gave opening and closing words, and encouraged the lively and open discussion.

The new data tell a positive story of the region, with both agricultural research spending and number of researchers increasing dramatically (at 37 and 20 percent, respectively) since 2006.

However, ASTI presenters emphasized that the picture was not rosy for every country. Many Central American countries, Caribbean island nations, and poorer Andean countries are increasingly falling behind in terms of infrastructure, investment levels, and capacity, while an aging pool of scientists— particularly those with PhD training—raises concerns about future knowledge gaps.

Nin-Pratt noted that many of the factors that led to a “perfect storm” of high agricultural productivity in the region in recent years—high commodity prices, favorable policy changes, new technologies, and private sector investment—will not be sufficient to sustain this production in the future. “Future growth will depend on efficient innovation systems,” he said.

As Beintema concluded, “Given the critical role of agricultural research in addressing climate change, persistent rural poverty, and other challenges, stable and sustainable levels of funding are key.”

ASTI is proud to announce the launch of its new website, loaded with easy-to-use tools for viewing, comparing, and downloading key agricultural R&D information.These new tools allow you to:

Rank and compare the status and direction of agricultural research investment and capacity across countries in Africa south of the Sahara, West Asia and North Africa, and Central America and the Caribbean.

Access detailed national-level trends in agricultural research investment and human resources, and download factsheets and other information on interactive country pages.

Explore in-depth datasets for a large number of low-and middle-income countries in the data download tool.

All of these interactive tools are available on a clean, newly redesigned website that—thanks to ASTI’s new backend coding system—is automatically updated with new data regularly.Watch a video tutorial on how to engage with interactive data, compare countries and regions, and download custom datasets.

As the world’s population continues to expand, ensuring that food production can meet the growing demand is an ever-mounting challenge. Climate change, soil degradation, and volatile food prices further threaten food security at a time when increasing agricultural output is paramount.

Regional spending on agricultural research and development (R&D) must double if the countries of SSA are to meet the recommended United Nations (UN) and African Union’s target of investing 1 percent of agricultural GDP in public agricultural R&D, not to mention the even more ambitious post-2015 recommendation that low- and middle-income countries ramp up spending on agricultural R&D by five percent from 2015 to 2025.

The report highlights additional challenges to national agricultural research systems:

Low staff retention and qualification levels: Civil service recruitment restrictions, low salaries, and inadequate funding have prevented many public agricultural research institutions from competing for, training, and retaining staff; in addition, a very large share of senior researchers are approaching retirement

Low female participation: Although female participation in agricultural R&D has increased in recent years, women have less influence on decisionmaking and policy because men continue to dominate in senior research and management positions.

High funding volatility: Volatile fluctuations in agricultural R&D funding exert negative impacts on agricultural research systems by impeding strategic planning, undermining the conduct of research programs, demotivating staff, and eroding prior progress, all of which affect the quality, quantity, and efficiency of research outcomes and their ultimate impact on agricultural productivity and poverty alleviation.

High donor dependency: Significant shares of government funding are generally allocated to salaries, leaving many countries dependent on donor and development bank funding to support the day-to-day costs of operating research programs and developing and maintaining R&D infrastructure; in addition to increasing funding volatility, high dependence on donor funding has the potential to skew national research priorities.

African governments and research agencies are limited in their choice of options to address the many challenges they face in developing their agricultural research systems because of funding constraints. The ASTI report lists various successful policy changes already adopted in certain countries, which can offer valuable lessons for other countries.

“It is critical that African countries invest more in agricultural research to ensure that they can feed their populations,” said Beintema. “Underinvestment, inadequate human resource capacity, poor research infrastructure, and a lack of coherent policies continue to constrain the quantity and quality of research outputs in many countries.”

TheAgricultural Science and Technology Indicators (ASTI)website is home to a new feature. ASTI has extracted the most relevant and consistent data from CGIAR centers’ annual reports to make it more accessible for reporting and analysis for those interested in the CGIAR’s financial and staffing evolution.

Detailed information on staffing, funding, and expenditures of individual CGIAR centers and the CGIAR system as a whole are now available in a series of interactive graphs and data downloads, providing visual insights into the evolution of the CGIAR system. This information was previously only available online in the PDF versions of the CGIAR annual financial reports.

ASTI supports the current CGIAR Open Access and Data Management Policy, which was established and adopted in November 2013, falling in line with scaling up good practice of making the current data more easily available. The CGIAR datasets will be maintained and updated by ASTI depending on funding availability.

Full time-series dataset available for Sub-Saharan African countries
ASTI is pleased to announce that all available data for its recent Sub-Saharan Africa survey round are now ready to download from the ASTI Data Tool. The new data cover 31 countries over the period 2001–08, and include indicators such as research staff levels and public expenditures on agricultural R&D.

ASTI Country Pages provide a wealth of agricultural R&D information
ASTI has compiled country-specific data, publications, links, and additional resources on its country webpages. Simply select a country from the list on the ASTI website to access.

ASTI has compiled a detailed directory containing contact and website details of agricultural research agencies in Sub-Saharan Africa, including those from the government, nonprofit, and higher education sectors. The directory forms a unique repository that provides quick and easy access to a wealth of information on agricultural R&D agencies operating in the region. It is a product of a survey round conducted during 2009–10 by ASTI and national partners in which 370 agricultural R&D agencies from 31 African countries participated.

The complete directory can be accessed at http://www.asti.cgiar.org/pdf/ASTI-Directory-2011.pdf. The pdf directory also contains links to country website pages that provide more resources, including R&D capacity and investment data and ASTI publications. Country-level directories can be accessed from the country pages on the ASTI website. Simply select a country from the list of available Sub-Saharan African countries, and click on “Country Profile” to access the directory.

ASTI plans to keep the Africa directory updated and to improve its country coverage over the coming years. It also aims to release similar directories for other developing regions in the coming months.

ASTI’s website provides easy access to not only ASTI’s many outputs, but also to a wide range of additional background data, trends, updates, and other information on agricultural research and development (R&D) systems in low and middle-income countries.

The newly-released 12-page Guide to Using ASTI’s Website provides instructions about how to maximize this wealth of information. This short, easy-to-use document will show you how to use the many features available on ASTI’s site—from the About ASTI page to the Country Information feature.

In-depth instructions walk you through the features-packed ASTI Data Tool so that you can easily map a subject, plot two data points, export data, and more.

If you have additional questions about how to navigate ASTI’s website, send an email to asti@cgiar.org.